The Gray House

“What things?” Ralph stopped at the door. “Oh, you know, of an urgent and unavoidable nature. Compose a resignation letter, type it up in duplicate. Pack, tidy up around the office a little. It’s amazing the way the dust just seems to stick to it. Return the linens to the laundry and some books to the library.”

“Oh god!” Raptor gasped. “Just what we needed . . .”

“Wait a minute!” Shark said. “I’m not signing that.”

“Don’t.” Ralph shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t care if your signature is on it or not.”

“Aren’t you the least interested in the results of the discussion?” Godmother said in a surprised voice. “In finding out who we are going to choose? Are you concerned about the welfare of your charges at all? Your childish behavior seems to suggest otherwise.”

Ralph smiled.

“I am reasonably sure that it will be my charges you are about to single out, and this is exactly why I am refusing to participate in this charade. As a counselor I am responsible for every single person in my groups. When someone pushes me aside and starts running their lives for them, the only thing that’s left for me is to say good-bye. I’m done here.”

Godmother grimaced.

“How easily you abandon your post. And how quick you are in forcing your responsibilities on others. It amazes me, frankly.”

“You just won’t believe”—Ralph glanced briefly at Shark, frozen in place—“the extent to which it amazes myself.”

He tidied the office, took a shower, and packed his black duffel bag. Used the old typewriter to type the resignation letter, signed it, and left it on the desk. Then, to his own surprise, he realized he was whistling a tune. So, is this really it? I am leaving forever? Just like that? Now that Shark and Godmother had revealed their plan, there was in this a justice of a sort. He wasn’t allowed to say his farewells properly to this place, to let the departure sink in, just as they wouldn’t be. Feeling ridiculously light and empty, he went out without even bothering to lock up. There wasn’t anything left in the office worth worrying about.

Ralph nodded to the on-duty Log (who undoubtedly took notice of the bag), crossed the hallway, and went up to the third floor.

The staff canteen was open until eight. It was cozy and quiet here, especially in the evenings. Round tables, on each one a wicker basket with bread, a massive wooden napkin holder, and an amusing salt-and-pepper set shaped like mice. Flower-patterned curtains. A neatly handwritten menu to the side of the serving window.

Ralph got two slices of meat pie and a tea, and went to sit at the corner table.

He was eating and looking at the photograph on the wall, under glass in an elaborately decorated frame. There were six of them in the canteen, all six utterly bewildering. Street shots. No people, no dogs, and none of the buildings caught in them could be considered of any interest. It was a mystery why these featureless images had to be printed in this large format, framed, and hung on the wall. Certainly not for aesthetic reasons.

Ralph studied the one closest to him and thought that, after he left, both it and the rest of them would forever remain an enigma, because without him no one would remember that these had been made by Flyers. They were of the Outsides. Flyers had photographed it haphazardly. The important thing had been to simply capture it. They returned to the House with their trophies, enlarged and printed them, framed them, and put them up in the windowless Horror Chamber on the first floor. The Chamber had existed specifically to cause discomfort. The children of the House liked scary stuff. There were other items in the horror storage, but the photographs of the Outsides were the undisputed highlight of the collection.

Then those who had created the Chamber of Horrors left, and the juniors who replaced them came to hate the exposition they’d inherited, so much that it had to be dismantled. The photographs ended up on the third floor. None of the current students had ever seen them; the entire thing happened before they had come here. Ralph often wondered what they’d feel if faced with them. Astonishment? Curiosity?

The shots might as well have been taken by Martians. A comprehensive detachment. Outsides distilled. That’s how it looked from their point of view. Not beautiful, not ugly, not anything at all. Even total strangers who happened to see the pictures couldn’t help being vaguely disturbed.

As Ralph looked at them, he realized that if, upon exiting the House, he really would be met with this faceless, scrubbed world of empty black-and-white streets, he would have felt much worse than he did now, and how lucky it was that for him the Outsides was not like that, and how unfortunate that he could not share that knowledge, that certainty with any of them.